


The Oceans of Mars

by PetrichorPerfume



Series: Shenanigans [187]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Time Travel, To Mars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 21:25:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6167353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorPerfume/pseuds/PetrichorPerfume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to The Joys of Time Travel, in which Michael's family travels back to when there was still water on Mars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Oceans of Mars

**Author's Note:**

> Let's just pretend for the sake of the story that there was once life on Mars.

Adam isn’t very impressed when they land on a beach in the middle of nowhere. When Michael had suggested time travel, he’d expected to see the pyramids being built, or the fall of Rome, or the discovery of the New World. Not some island in the middle of a seemingly endless ocean.

 

“We’re somewhere very special,” Michael whispers, as if it’s a secret.

 

“And where exactly is that?” Dean asks, sounding about as impressed as Adam feels.

 

“Shh,” Lucifer warns. “We’re not even supposed to be here.”

 

“And here is where?” Sam asks. He has the courtesy to whisper, but Adam is so done with these boring family trips to places that could only possibly be special to the angels who were around when they were first created. He’s about to say just that when Gabriel speaks.

 

“Mars. Before she lost her oceans.”

 

They all fall silent for a long moment, the angels in reverence and the humans in utter shock.

 

“Mars?” Dean asks in a harsh whisper. “That’s... That’s impossible!”

 

“Archangels here,” Gabriel answers, gesturing to himself and his older brothers. “Nothing’s impossible.”

 

Adam can’t help himself; the next question falls unbidden from his lips. “Can we go swimming?”

 

Michael shakes his head sadly. “You’re an alien,” he says simply, which doesn’t do anything good for Adam’s self esteem but he supposes it’s true. Here, now, he _is_ an alien, out of time and out of place on a distant world in a far-away era.

 

“You’d contaminate the waters,” Lucifer explains. “Any of us would.” He pauses. “Michael and I went swimming here, once, when it was first created. The water’s great.”

 

That brings about some distant longing in the pit of Adam’s stomach, some sharp desire to feel the waters of an alien world lapping around his shoulders and crashing over his head as the waves make their way to the shore, but he knows he can’t go anywhere near the sea. It makes his heart ache as if he’s lost something vitally important, and who knows? Maybe he has. Maybe in coming here, he’s surrendering a piece of himself to Mars, a tiny, miniscule part of him that is destined to stay here on this island forever, even as the waters recede and the land dries and turns to desert. The thought of it makes him shudder.

 

“But there’s fruit,” Michael is quick to say. It doesn’t quite make up for that feeling of longing, but it does cause a small swell of pride in his belly. He’ll be tasting two billion year old fruit that no one else in the solar system except for his family even knew existed. Michael leads them to the singular tree in the center of the island, and plucks several of the oblong reddish-purple fruits – one for each of them.

 

Adam bites into it and immediately spits it back out. It tastes exactly how he’d always imagined nuclear waste would, and it smells like toxic fumes. “Yuck,” he says vehemently.

 

His brothers have very similar reactions, as do Cas and Gabriel, but Michael and Lucifer gobble up their portions with nostalgic gusto, and reach for more.

 

It isn’t long before the sun is setting. “You don’t want to be on Mars after dark,” Castiel declares, and his brothers nod in agreement. No one explains why, and that feeling from earlier comes back in full force. Adam wants to stay, and watch the sunset, and try the fruit again, and go swimming, and see more of this beautiful planet that will have been transformed into a barren wasteland when they return to their own time.

 

Castiel’s words echo in his mind, though, so he takes Michael’s hand, squeezes it, and allows himself to be whisked off back to his own planet and his native time where the oceans of Mars have dried and the fruits have withered and died and the planet herself was just a rocky ball hurtling through space and time, two billion years later.


End file.
